


Breakthrough In Aisle Nine

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic [128]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: First Kiss, Grocery Shopping, M/M, Mutual Pining, Permanent Injury, Prompt Fill, Reconciliation, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 11:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9122128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: Two prompts for the price of one this time!LJ Comment Fic for Sweet Sensations prompt:Any, any+/any, hearing a loved one's voice for the first time after a long separationandLJ Comment Fic for Free For All prompt:any, any, we were deeply in love but I broke your heart (even though I’m still in love with you) when I moved away with no explanation or goodbye but now I’m back home and we run into each other at the super marketIn which John and Rodney reunite after a long absence, in a very unlikely place.





	

Rodney hated grocery shopping, hated it with a fiery passion usually reserved for talk show hosts, reality television, and physicists who kept getting things wrong, wrong, wrong. He’d used a service for a while, but after they’d included a bag of complimentary clementines he’d been forced to resume his own shopping.

He hated the canned music, and the poor lighting. He hated people who shopped with screaming kids. He hated –

“…not the thin ones.”

Rodney froze, and had to replay the words several times in his head to understand why they’d stopped him, and why he was absently rubbing at his ear.

The voice that had spoken from the next aisle over – cookies, crackers and random snacks – sounded just like John’s. The stupid drawl, the nasal inflection. Rodney hadn’t heard it in such a long time, and it immediately transported him back to Atlantis; the best and worst five years of his life.

It couldn’t be John. As far as Rodney knew, and he was admittedly out of the loop now, John was still with the SGC. Probably still on Atlantis. But the thought that it might be him, however slim the odds, was enough to have Rodney stealthily pushing his shopping cart around the end of the aisle.

John-fucking-Sheppard. In the middle of Rodney’s grocery store. Comparing packages of Chips Ahoy cookies. Rodney’s skin flashed hot. Should he say something? Sneak off and leave the shopping for another day?

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the bakery?”

For the first time Rodney noticed that John wasn’t alone. There was a young, shapely blonde woman with him, and the old jealously flared through him; it was even more out of place now than it had been then.

“Trust me. This is the way to go.”

“If you say so.” The woman – more of a girl, really, and wasn’t that typical? – pulled out her phone.

John was married. Or engaged. Or whatever. Well, of course he would be. The Kirk of two galaxies. Except that’s not how Rodney remembered things. The John Sheppard of his memory had been oddly bashful. He’d shared beers with Rodney out on the East Pier, and named constellations with him. They’d raced cars, fought side-by-side, saved each other’s lives. He’d been Rodney’s best friend once upon a time.

He needed to go. But in Rodney’s haste to make an unobtrusive getaway, he backed into a display of Cheez-Its. The whole thing came crashing down, boxes hitting the floor. His hands curled around the handle of the shopping cart and his face flushed with heat as he cursed his bad luck.

“Rodney?”

It had been almost three years since he’d heard his name said that way, a mixture of exasperation and affection, and he was a little ashamed at the tears burning his eyes because of it. Who cried over someone saying their name? It was stupid. But no stupider than running into John in the middle of a grocery store.

“Sheppard,” Rodney replied. He took a deep breath and looked up, steeling himself.

Oh. He hadn’t been ready for that.

“You okay?” John was standing so close, but he seemed hesitant. Unsure.

And his face. There were several thin scars running from his left eyebrow to his cheekbone, and there was something wrong with that eye. The color wasn’t right, it didn’t match the other one.

“What happened?” Rodney blurted out before he could stop himself.

John took a half step back, and his female companion was there with her hand on his arm and concern on her face.

“Everything okay?”

“Little young for you, isn’t she?” Rodney said, and cursed his traitorous mouth. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to come off sounding like a spurned lover. After all, John hadn’t been the one who left.

John’s expression hardened. “This is my niece, Shelby.”

“And you must be Dr. McKay.” The niece gave him a disapproving once-over. She didn’t say how nice it was to meet him. “Uncle John, maybe we should go.”

John visibly steeled himself. Rodney had seen that before, usually right before a firefight or another act of inadvisable heroism.

“No, it’s okay. This is why I came.”

“Are you sure?” Shelby looked at Rodney like she wanted to filet him right there in the cookie aisle. He glared back at her.

“I’m sure.”

“Call me when you need to get picked up.” She kissed John on the cheek, sent Rodney one more death glare, and then she was gone.

“John, I –”

“Can we go somewhere and talk?” John asked, interrupting.

Rodney looked down at his cart. “I’m not finished shopping.”

Which, admittedly, was dumb. But he didn’t know what else to say. If he went somewhere with John, they’d sit and stare at each other, and Rodney wouldn’t know what to do with his hands. Grocery shopping was normal and familiar, and he could keep the cart between them.

“Okay,” John said agreeably. “Let’s shop.”

Rodney had been through a lot of strange things. Wormhole travel. Developing superpowers. Fighting space vampires like some kind of space cowboy. But nothing at that moment seemed more surreal than grocery shopping with John Sheppard.

“You look good,” John said after an awkward silence. 

“Personal trainer,” Rodney replied. 

It always sounded so pretentious. _Personal trainer_. That was something celebrities had. Gayle was also his nutritionist, but he didn’t see the need to mention that. Living in Pegasus for five years had changed him. Made him more fit. Made him eat healthier because they didn’t have access to stores full of processed foods made with high fructose corn syrup. Rodney hadn’t wanted to go back to the man he’d been before, lazy and getting pudgy around the middle.

“Good for you.” John didn’t sound condescending or judgmental, and Rodney allowed himself to relax just a little.

“Is it okay if I ask what happened to your eye? That one’s obviously a fake.”

John gave him a side-eye look. “Most people can’t tell.”

 _Most people haven’t memorized your face_ , Rodney thought to himself. He knew every eyebrow quirk, every expression, and hazel was such an inaccurate word to describe the variety of color and tone in John’s eyes. The fake was good, but nothing could recreate the original.

“There was an explosion. I caught some shrapnel.”

Rodney hoped it had knocked him out as well, because the pain had to have been excruciating. He tried not to think about how many times John had woken up in the infirmary to an empty chair, the one Rodney had always sat in until he was sure John was okay. Or maybe someone else had filled it, how would he know?

There was another awkward silence, and Rodney filled it by pulling cans of vegetables off the shelf. There was a good sale on the Libby’s.

“You should eat fresh veggies,” John remarked.

“I forget I have them and they end up rotting in the fridge.” The downside to single living was not having someone to remind him about things like that. Then again, it was a nice challenge for Gayle, and he was paying her enough that he didn’t mind making her really work for it.

He missed tava beans.

“I’m sorry about Jennifer,” John said. He still had the package of Chips Ahoy cookies in his hands, and he kept fidgeting with it.

Rodney felt a flare of anger, and gripped the cart handle tighter. “It was inevitable, right? What could she possibly see in a guy like me.”

“Whoa, where did that come from?”

“I know you didn’t approve,” Rodney snapped. He narrowly avoided back-ending an elderly lady in a scooter. “Everyone knew she was too good for me. Even I knew it.”

“Rodney, that’s not –”

“You know what hurt the most? You let it come between our friendship.” 

It had been three years, but the pain was still just as fresh as it had been back then. When Rodney and Jennifer had gotten serious, John had pulled away. Suddenly he was too busy for race cars and too busy for beers and video games and movie night. The whole team had started drifting apart, and if Atlantis hadn’t been called back to Earth it was likely that the team would’ve dissolved altogether. Or at least Rodney’s place in it.

When Atlantis went back to Pegasus, it had been easier for Rodney to agree to stay Earthside with Jennifer. And then there’d been no point in going back once things ended with her. He could work for the SGC just as easily from Boulder, which was close enough to Colorado Springs that he could go there if there was an emergency, but far enough away that he didn’t run the risk of running into anyone he didn’t want to.

“That’s not how it was,” John said.

“Well, that’s how I remember it. Did you come here to gloat?”

“I came here because I’m tired of riding a desk.” John put his foot on the bottom of the cart to keep it from moving, and seemed undeterred when Rodney glared at him. “I came here because it wasn’t the same after you left. And…I was hoping maybe you’d consider coming back.”

Back to Atlantis. It wasn’t like Rodney hadn’t thought about it. Of course he’d thought about it. Had weighed the pros and cons after his marriage imploded. In the end it was John that had decided him, John that made him stay on Earth, because Rodney couldn’t go back to being so close to something he couldn’t have. It was torture.

“No.” Rodney yanked the cart back and moved it around John. He must’ve been an idiot to finish his shopping. If he wasn’t so close to done he’d be tempted to leave the whole thing and just walk out. If only his cupboards weren’t so empty. 

If only he wasn’t still so in love with John.

“Come on, McKay. I know you miss it. We need you.”

“If that were true you’d have been here years ago begging me to come back.”

“We did.”

“No, Zelenka did because he hates being in charge, and he hates being on a Gate team. That’s not the same thing.”

And yes, that was petty. Rodney had wanted _John_ to ask him. He’d had this dumb fantasy about John realizing he was in love with Rodney and begging him to come home. It was juvenile in the extreme, but he’d wanted to be _wanted_ , in a way that Jennifer never had. She’d always tried to fix him, make him fit some image she had of an ideal Rodney McKay. John had always been accepting of him for who he was.

“Will you just stop?” John snapped. 

Rodney looked at him in surprise, and so did everyone else in that particular aisle.

“Give your fucking ego a rest for a goddamn second. I’m here, right now, asking you to come back. You’re being wasted here.”

“I’m too old to be running from armed natives, Sheppard. Besides, I have a life here.”

“What life?” John shot back. “You work from home. You’re single. You have a personal trainer, for fuck’s sake. There’s still important work to do back home.”

“I don’t –”

“I gave you your space because I thought you were happy. I thought you had what you wanted, and I wanted that for you, too.” John pulled the bag of lentil beans out of Rodney’s hands and tossed it in the cart with the package of cookies. “But you’re not happy, and I’m not happy, and I just think that if you came back we could both be happy again.”

Rodney stared at him. That was quite the speech, and he sounded so sincere. It occurred to Rodney that he didn’t even know if John was still the military leader. He said he’d been riding a desk, probably had been since he lost his eye. No more offworld missions. He was probably going insane with inactivity.

“I can’t,” Rodney said. And there was real regret there. In the past he’d have done anything for John, _had_ done anything that was asked of him. He’d become proficient with a firearm. He’d done his best work under pressure and John’s constant needling. He’d put the safety of others ahead of his own.

“Why?”

“You can’t just come here and expect me to –”

“Why?” John repeated. He was standing toe to toe with Rodney, so close. Too close.

“I can’t be around you!” Rodney blurted out, flushing. 

John looked taken aback, and hurt. “What?”

“I can’t spend another five years looking at your stupid face and your stupid hair and listening to that stupid laugh, because it’s too hard to be that close to you and not have you. And I know how that sounds and I don’t care because it’s the truth. You want to know why? That’s why. Fuck you.”

And, oh, wonderful. They’d drawn a crowd. Rodney would never be able to shop there again. He’d have to drive all the way to Denver just to –

Before he knew what was happening, Rodney had John’s hands on his face and John’s mouth on his mouth, and they were kissing right there in front of the other shoppers and the legumes. 

Rodney’s brain shorted out momentarily, and when he regained control of his faculties he had both hands fisted in the back of John’s shirt and his tongue down John’s throat, and one of them was crying. Maybe both of them. He pulled back, just enough so he could see John’s face.

“What’s happening right now?”

John huffed out a watery laugh. “We’re both assholes, that’s what’s happening.”

“You stopped being my friend,” Rodney said, and it was more question than accusation.

“Jennifer had what I wanted. I was jealous, and angry, and I didn’t want to hear about how wonderful things were with the two of you anymore. I couldn’t.”

“You’re right. You are an asshole.” Rodney pulled him in for another kiss, reveling in the feel of John’s body pressed against his. It was everything he’d ever wanted, and he kicked himself for not knowing it was something he could’ve had all those years ago.

“Come home,” John murmured against Rodney’s lips.

“Okay,” Rodney replied.


End file.
